Before the Flock

by David Inglish

  At the Lazy Lizard in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico

  SALLY’S STRUNG OUT

  with special guests: Thunderstik.

  “What day is it?” Lunky asks a man in a blue sweater.

  “It’s Saturday.”

  “The tenth of December?”

  “Yup.”

  Lunky spots a red San Diego trolley rumbling south. He thunders after it, grabs a rail, and hops onto the back hitch. The wind blows through his white hair. His bright blue eyes smile. He grits his teeth.

  The Seine ends in confrontation, in the English Channel, staring off at the enemy on the other side. The River Thames opens to the North Sea from whence the Vikings came. The river 5 ends at a concrete archway, painted orange and green, manned by stone-faced military mustaches with machine guns – Welcome to Mexico!

  From La Jolla, Tijuana is a half-hour, Ensenada another half-hour from there. It’s close, but cross the border and instantly the world smells like burning plastic. No trees, the land is lumpy and brown like a burlap sack. The people are real – Mama’s love their babies. Babies grow up to love their mothers. Men have hands of stone. They will use them to knock you down or hand you a cervesa. Tougher and rougher than Americans, the French kneel to the British, the British to the Terrible Norsemen, and some day we too may kneel to our more brutish cousins from the south.

  The Sally’s Strung Out tour bus passes under the orange-and-green concrete archway and Gary Faker, the insect like lead singer, chirps out, “Hey, is this where Mexican Brown comes from?”

  A white-haired hag yells: “Yeah, you dumbshit.”

  “I fucking love it already! Let’s score some dope that hasn’t crossed the border up someone’s asshole!”

  Sally’s Strung Out is from the Silverlake area of Los Angeles. While Sven’s old band veered from Glam to Wandering Minstrel, Sally’s Strung Out kept the androgyny and show of Glam, but added heroin chic, Latin American mysticism, and Dionysian sexual carnival. A combination that proved commercially irresistible.

  The metal bands of the early eighties reveled in the delectability of sin, but there was the attitude somewhere within the music that they knew what they were doing was wrong and that someday they would straighten out and go home and behave. Sally’s Strung Out believes they are already home. There is nothing wrong with shooting junk, shoplifting, group sex. It’s rock and roll. They also believe that these acts can be made sacred through ritual. Their last album, Nothing’s Wrong, went double platinum.

  Gary Faker is a performance artist and stripper from New York who learned to surf and play guitar at eighteen, and his alt-rock kids have descended on Ensenada to attend a rock show where they can actually drink alcohol. They arrive like locusts, eating ecstasy and drinking jamaica until their laughing mouths are stained red.

  Kurt and Eric drive beneath the concrete archway and wave at the guards. Eric begins to worry. “Dude. Should I get Mexican insurance?”

  Kurt looks at the clock on the dash. “No.”

  Kurt knows the way to Ensenada. He knows the loops. He knows how to get on the Tijuana-Ensenada Cuota. The city falls away. The shoreline emerges on the right. “Fuck,” Kurt says, “I think there’s waves.”

  Civilization reappears in an oasis of filthy hand-painted signs and half-finished concrete construction. In the center of this, a lime-green stucco monstrosity tilts in a dirt parking lot, rebar sticking out of the top like hairs on the scalp of a giant misshapen head. “This must be the Lizard,” Kurt says.

  The parking lot is filled with teenagers—dyed black hair, black nailpolish, metal rings in lips and brows, guys dressed in gauze, girls dressed like truckers. “Fuck,” Eric says. “This doesn’t exactly look like our crowd.”

  “These kids are gonna flip when they hear us.”

  The Jovi and Sophie board a propeller plane in San Diego that rattles and shakes and let’s them know that they are leaving a place for primitives and heading to L.A., where the real world begins in the first class lounge.

  Then the flight, it’s twelve hours of reclining and movies and “May I get you…?” and you’re there. Paris is a city of circles, of riverbanks, of high doors and high fashion. And Sophie knows that the Jovi will be lost here. He won’t understand them—the men who take the shots, the women who call them, the men in their black turtlenecks, the women in half the skin they were born with. He won’t understand, but he’ll be kind and effervescent. He’ll shake hands with Giuseppe as if he were her father, as if he was the one who made her. But Sophie knows that she made herself. And she’s about to do it again.

  “Here, take this,” Sophie tells the Jovi. It’s the day of the shoot. The day she will stand naked before a crowd of onlookers and one lens that connects to millions of eyes. A lens that she will crawl through and be born again, bigger and better and richer than she’s ever been.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a few thousand dollars in francs. Go entertain yourself. Mommy has to work.”

  Backstage is a yellow concrete room. A concrete divider separates the room from a stainless-steel prison toilet. Sally’s Strung Out prefers to hang in their tour bus, so the whole room belongs to Thunderstik.

  Felder walks in with a short, heavy-set guy with reddish hair stuffed in a beret. “Guys, come over here. I want you to meet Arty Azimoff.”

  “Hey,” Kurt mumbles, and shakes his hand.

  “Golden-Eared Arty,” EJ says, and offers his hand. Sven and Eric follow.

  “I’ve heard your album,” Arty says. “I gotta tell you, DCA really dropped the ball. You guys should be as big as my other band, Led ‘n’ Lilacs. You should be that big right now! That song, ‘Bleed Me,’ is a signature song. It should be blasting on every AOR radio in this country. Hey! There’s four of you? I thought there were five.”

  “Yeah, where’s the Jovi?” Felder asks.

  “He’s always late,” Kurt says. “He’ll be here.”

  “What, you go on in a half-hour, right?”

  Kurt nods and sneers into the flame as he lights a smoke.

  “Alright. We’re gonna go say hi to Gary Faker and get a nice cold beer.”

  Kurt extends his craggy hand a second time to Arty. “Thanks, man. Thanks a lot.”

  Arty and Felder walk out the back door.

  EJ screams, “WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE DOING! KURT, YOU CAN’T JUST LIE TO FELDER LIKE THAT! WE HAVEN’T PRACTICED—”

  “Keep your voice down. He lies to us all the time. I know all the guitar parts—I fucking wrote them. We’re the best band in California whether we have five guys or four guys or three.”

  “I know, Kurt, but this just seems idiotic.”

  Eric nods. “Those kids out there are fucking weird. And there’s a lot of them. And this is Mexico.”

  Sven shrugs his shoulders and bobs his head in agreement. “There’s only four of us.”

  The band members are silent, and in the distance they can hear a three-part chant droning against the concrete walls. “HAIR-OH-WIN! HAIR-OH-WIN! HAIR-OH-WIN! HAIR-OH-WIN!”

  “Jesus Christ, they sound like zombies!” EJ says.

  “What the fuck are they saying?” Kurt asks.

  “No, man, I know these guys from Silverlake.” Sven shakes his head. “Gary Faker shoots up on stage. It’s like the full-on apex of the show.”

  “Fuck,” EJ says, and drops his head.

  “Fuck is right.” Sven stares at the same spot on the floor.

  “We’re gonna get killed out there,” Eric says. “The Jovi’s probably getting sucked off right now by his supermodel wife in a fucking four-star hotel, and we’re about to blow our shot at a record deal and get eaten alive by a bunch of teenage zombies!”

  “AND SOME DAY THE JOVI WILL KNOW THAT HIS BEAUTIFUL WIFE AND HIS SATIN SHEETS ARE A CURSE!”

  They look up at Kurt. “What?”

  “We’re going to rock this place tonight. You hear me?”

  “Fuck,” Eric says glumly, “I should’ve stayed in coll
ege.”

  “What’s wrong with you? That’s over for you. You’re not some spoon-fed schoolboy anymore! You’re a rocker! You belong in this band!”

  “You think?” Eric smiles and puffs out his chest just a little.

  “We’re going to take this stage tonight. This is the only stage in the whole fucking world I’m interested in. And tonight is the only night that matters. You want to walk the commencement stage? Is that what you want? And have some bald man hand you a diploma? Is that what you fucking want, Eric?”

  “FUCK NO! Anyone can graduate from college—dolphins, chimps, collies, they all got degrees.”

  “Goddamn right! It takes something real to seize a stage in Mexico, make an unruly crowd submit, and then take them to the edge of insanity. No man knows his worth surfing two-foot waves! A man only knows what he’s made of when he paddles out into fifteen-foot sets at Black’s Beach! In the rain! That’s what we’re going to do tonight—AND THE BROS AT THE BEACH ARE NEVER GOING TO FORGET IT!”

  “GODDAMN RIGHT!” Sven yells.

  “You should be glad there’s only three of you. The fewer men the greater share of royalties. I want you to know that every man who takes the stage tonight with me gets an equal cut when this thing is over and we get a new record deal. I’M SPLITTING THE PUBLISHING FOUR WAYS—YOU HEAR ME? FOUR WAYS!”

  EJ smiles. “That’s mighty white of you, Kurt. Let’s pray!”

  Thunderstik takes the stage. Kurt looks out at the crowd. A fetid stench lingers at the edge of the platform like brimstone. Kurt turns to EJ. “No happy songs tonight.” EJ nods.

  Thunderstik starts with the hard-rocking ballad “Bleed Me.” The guitar solo starts slow and sweet, but builds until Kurt’s fingers move in a blur as if they were a swarm of bees stinging every note except the one he wants. It is a solo built on inference. The metaphor is the genius—it’s like the outstretched hand of Adam reaching for the outstretched hand of God. Kurt has come in contact with the moment before they touch.

  EJ is a one-man Zulu nation. He pounds out rhythms. They become urgent, then lie back, then become urgent again. Sven is playing things in between the driving bass lines. Up high, down low, he is everywhere. Eric’s little melodies complement the sound as he fills some of the space the Jovi left behind.

  Thunderstik finishes with “Mind Mesmerize,” an apocalyptic song that ends in an intense growing din of chaos. The sound is so thick it surrounds everything. It marches off the stage and leaves the audience spellbound.

  The music is over. Kurt is exhausted and sweating. Teenage zombies pledge their allegiance to the band. “You ARE punk rock!” they yell.

  The band meets Felder and Arty near the stage while the roadies for Sally’s Strung Out set up.

  “So,” Kurt asks. “What did you think?”

  “It was excellent, but where’s your guitar player? This fellow, the Jovi, I’ve heard so much about?” Arty asks.

  “He quit four days ago.”

  Arty laughs. “It’s always a movie, isn’t it? Just trying to keep the great bands together. Talent hates talent. Gift hates gift.”

  “We don’t need him,” Kurt says. “You heard it tonight.”

  “Felder tells me you and the Jovi have been playing together since you were little kids.”

  “We have.”

  “You don’t just find that kind of chemistry. Put the band back together—the one that made that album—and we got a deal.”

  “Sweet!” EJ belts out.

  Eric high-fives Sven.

  “I’ll call him tomorrow – get his ass back in the fold!” Felder smiles. “YES!” He tries to high-five Kurt, but Kurt leaves him hanging.

  The lights dim. The house announcer says, “Please put your hands together for Sally’s Strung Out!” The music starts with a chaotic drumroll and a birdlike screech.

  “LOOK, MAN. I APPRECIATE THE OFFER,” Kurt yells over the music. “BUT THIS RIGHT HERE IS THE BAND. YOU EITHER TAKE US OR YOU LEAVE US. YOU HEARD IT TONIGHT. YOU KNOW THE TRUTH.”

  “NO, NO, NO.” Felder is beside himself. “He doesn’t have to decide between Jagger or Richards!”

  Golden-Eared Arty scratches his red beard and looks at Kurt. Kurt’s tan, slick chest is heaving. Gary Faker has dropped down on his knees in front of a little sacrificial shrine center stage. The crowd is once again chanting “HAIR-OH-WIN! HAIR-OH-WIN!”

  “WELL?”

  “NO. I PASS!” Arty turns and walks away.

  Felder grips his frizzy hair on the top of his skull and screams, “YOU FUCKTARD!”

  Kurt turns to see Gary Faker sit down a young girl on a crude wooden stool before him. Gary Faker drips the wax from a black candle across her arm and across a skull carved out of volcanic rock. The white-haired hag ties off the girls arm then moves behind to hold the girl up.

  “STOP THAT!” Kurt yells.

  Gary stands and tilts his head at the mic. “A virgin.”

  The crowd cheers.

  He lowers a bent spoon over the candle, sticks a needle in the spoon, pulls blood from a vein in her arm, pushes the plunger down, and she nods off.

  “NO!” Kurt yells.

  The white-haired hag eases her to the floor. Quickly, like he wants in on the fun, Gary Faker loads the dart and has it in his arm. As the plunger drops, he too collapses on the stage.

  “What the fuck is that?” Kurt asks EJ.

  “It’s Santeria.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Mexican magic.”

  “Goddamned devil won’t leave me alone.” Kurt walks right out into the middle of the stage. The band is playing a frenetic pseudotribal beat. The white-haired hag is stroking the girl’s hair. Gary Faker is rolling on the floor in a trance, taking his clothes off. Kurt grabs the microphone. “THIS GODDAMN DEVIL BULLSHIT IS WRONG! GOD GOT ME OFF DRUGS! THIS IS BULLSHIT! DRUGS ARE BAD!” He kicks the shrine over; the candle rolls to the edge of the stage. The skull drops heavily at his feet.

  The crowd boos and throws beer at Kurt. The band stops playing. A Samoan bouncer and a black bouncer eye Kurt from below, not sure if this is part of the show. Kurt says into the microphone, “Hey, Golden-Eared Arty!”

  Arty turns.

  “I got another song to play for you. Gimme that!” He grabs a guitar and starts strumming. He motions to EJ, Sven, and Eric. “You guys get out here, one more song. C’mon, Arty, don’t leave!”

  EJ looks at Sven and Eric, and says, “Let’s rock.”

  Sven grabs the bass. EJ pushes the drummer off his stool. Eric muscles out the bongo player. We begin “Alone, Alone,” building it softly on a muted bass string. Kurt lifts his arms in the sign of the cross, closes his eyes, and sings up high in a choirboy falsetto. Gary Faker rises up behind Kurt in nothing but a red thong. He lifts a Telecaster with his feeble white arms and whacks Kurt in the back of the head. The kids cheer. Kurt shakes it off, wheels around, grabs Faker’s neck, drops to a knee, and smacks Gary’s head on the stage. Blood flows from the singer’s hairline. Kurt continues singing about loneliness. Someone in the audience yells “Louder!”

  The security guards look at each other and shrug their shoulders. Gary Faker motions to them and points with a long ladylike finger at Kurt. The security guards take Kurt’s still outstretched arms and twist them behind his back. Kurt yells, “LISTEN TO THE PRETTY SINGING!” Eric stops playing the bongos, picks up Gary Faker’s Telecaster, and takes a big swing into the back of the knees of the Samoan bouncer. He doesn’t budge. Sven runs over and bites the black guy in the calf. The black guy kicks Sven off the stage into the mosh pit. The teenage vampires attack him in a mob, pulling hair, slapping, kicking, stomping. Eric karate chops the Samoan’s neck. He turns around and growls. Eric dives off the stage after Sven. The mosh pit swallows him in a single gulp. EJ leaves the drum kit. “LET MY SINGER GO!”

  Like overfed serpents, the Samoan bouncer’s arms swim through Kurt’s elbows and meet behind his neck. The black bouncer tackles EJ and pins him to the gro
und. Gary Faker motions for his drummer to play a beat. The beat starts. It’s a sort of jazz march. Gary Faker tap-dances on the stage like a giant cricket. He rubs the blood from his forehead up and down his chest, and holds the heavy stone skull in the palm of his hand. The white-haired hag grabs Gary’s hand, and begins an open waltz. She holds knitting needles in her free hand. They kiss the bloody skull and dance over to where Kurt struggles. They look at each other, look at the audience, count to three, and kick him in the stomach to the beat of the drums.

  Someone in the audience screams, “BEST SALLY’S SHOW EVER!”

  “KILL THEM ALL!”

  In the darkness at the bottom of the mosh pile, Eric exhales what he thinks is his last breath. He cries out, “Don’t let me die in this unholy place!” And his prayer is answered instantly. The weight of the young vampires is lessened one by one. There is light. Eric looks up and sees Lunky the Loyal’s glowing halo of platinum hair surrounding his smiling face. Lunky tosses the last few teenagers like salad.

  Sven and Eric get to their feet. Lunky jumps up on the stage, kicks the black bouncer in the gut, throws a monstrous uppercut that catches the Samoan in the throat. Kurt straightens up, gasping for air. The white-haired hag twirls over and stabs Kurt in the shoulder with a knitting needle. Kurt pulls it out, leaps in her direction, grabs her by her mane, and flings her backward onto the ground. Her head hits the floor with a loud crack. Kurt grabs Gary Faker by the hair and forces him onto his knees. Kurt pries the stone skull from Gary’s hand and cocks his arm. There’s a drumroll. Gary looks up at Kurt, nods his head, and says, “Rad.”

  Kurt looks at the audience and yells, “IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT?”

  Some cheer, some gasp. Behind Kurt, the white-haired hag crawls to Gary’s rescue. The young girl is know curled over and weeping.

  Kurt looks down. The back of the hag’s head is split open, and dark black blood runs down her white hair. Kurt stands above the two of them and lifts the skull in the air. Then he hears a woman’s sobs. Something changes. He is sick of it all. He says, “I’m not my dad.” Then he swings the skull across his own jaw, shattering the part of his mouth that makes all the music. The part that is divine. The skull makes a dull thud on the stage. Kurt drops to his knees, holds his flabby jaw gently in his hands, and weeps.